1,2-BUTANEDIOL

📋 Quick facts

Description: 1,2-BUTANEDIOL — HUMECTANT, SKIN CONDITIONING, SOLVENT, VISCOSITY CONTROLLING.

All Functions: HUMECTANT, SKIN CONDITIONING, SOLVENT, VISCOSITY CONTROLLING

Quick Facts:

• Category: humectant

Proven Benefits At A Glance:

• 1,2-Butanediol is a chemical ingredient used in polyesters, plasticizers, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals
• Scientists have engineered a biological pathway to produce it from renewable carbohydrates like glucose
• This is the first reported method for making 1,2-butanediol through biological production from renewable resources
• The research is still in early stages—current lab production yields are very small (0.15 g/L)

⚗️ Chemical Overview

Butane-1,2-diol is a butanediol in which the two hydroxy groups are located at positions 1 and 2. It has a role as a metabolite. It is a glycol and a butanediol. 1,2-butandiol is a metabolite found in or produced by Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Source(s): Yeast Metabolome Database (YMDB), ChEBI, via PubChem

📊 Comedogenicity

🛡️ Safety rating

Safety tier is a starting heuristic from regulatory status and comedogenic rating, not a dermatological verdict — see our Terms for the full disclaimer. Research confidence reflects how many real cited studies back this ingredient, not the strength of their findings.

🌍 Regulatory Status

💧 Skin Type Compatibility

⚠️ Don’t Combine With

📚 Research & Evidence

🔬 The Science

1,2-Butanediol (also written as 1,2-BDO) is a chemical compound that has long been used in manufacturing—it shows up in polyester polyols, plasticizers (chemicals that make materials more flexible), cosmetics formulations, and pharmaceutical products. However, the ingredient has traditionally been made through chemical synthesis rather than biological processes (ACS Synth Biol, 2024). What’s novel here is that researchers designed an entirely new biological pathway to make 1,2-butanediol from renewable resources like glucose. They did this by taking the natural pathway that cells use to make the amino acid l-threonine and adding two artificial metabolic modules—essentially biological “add-ons”—that convert l-threonine into an intermediate compound called 2-hydroxybutyric acid, which then becomes 1,2-butanediol (ACS Synth Biol, 2024).

The researchers engineered a strain of E. coli bacteria to do this conversion work, and after optimizing which enzymes (biological catalysts) worked best, their best-performing strain produced 0.15 g/L of 1,2-butanediol using glucose as the starting material (ACS Synth Biol, 2024). While this is a significant scientific achievement—proving for the first time that bio-based production of this ingredient is possible—the yield is still very small and the work is described as laying foundational groundwork rather than being ready for commercial use. The sources provided do not contain information about any skincare benefits, efficacy, or safety profile of 1,2-butanediol in cosmetic applications.

📄 Related Research

Matched by search — not necessarily verified support for every statement above.

• Qin N et al. (2024). Metabolic Engineering of Escherichia coli for De Novo Production of 1,2-Butanediol. ACS Synth Biol.

🧴 Products Containing 1,2-BUTANEDIOL